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Top LMS Software Solutions Infographic

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Why?

Capterra has assisted with many software purchases over the years, and one of the most common approaches we have witnessed is to begin with the most popular offerings in the market. It is my belief that there is both a right way and a wrong way to do this. The wrong way is to determine what you deem to be the 2-3 most popular and then use that as your shortlist from which you do not deviate. Butler University epitomized this approach when they made their LMS selection notes public last year. They appear to have done many things right, but why limit yourself to two offerings when there are so many other viable options?

The more sensible way would be to begin with a longer list of market leaders and narrow that down based on your requirements. Then, proceed to find other alternatives that may be lesser known but possibly a better match for your overall needs. There are some great products that are either too new or too niche to have a high market share, receive high marks in a Gartner or Forrester report, or win any sort of popularity contest. Capterra’s “Top 20 Most Popular” infographic series is our attempt to help those buyers who take this approach to do so successfully.

There are two reasons why we decided not to create a typical market share report. First, product pricing can have a huge impact since revenue is usually the sole component of market share. Focusing on users and/or customers removes price from the equation. Second, most software companies are private and are very hesitant to disclose their revenue. Even public companies often do not break down their revenue by product line. This means that creating an accurate view of market share would be difficult if not impossible.

We settled on three components for our popularity index: number of customers (aka installs), number of end users, and what we call “online presence.” The first two are the most important and each make up 40% of the score. Online presence, which has multiple components, makes up 20% of the score. Each of the three overall components is flawed, but all three together help compensate for the individual flaws; the end result is what we believe to be the best measure of overall popularity within a given software sector.

The Research

We began our LMS research by scouring the Web for all mentions of leading LMS solutions. Awards sites, blogs, discussion forums, social media channels and other research published online led us to about 50 vendors. We used Capterra’s own LMS Software Directory to find which vendors had received a high number of reviews. Plus, we ran a check of our 300+ vendors to see which ones had the highest amount of web traffic according to 3rd party estimates. This resulted in an initial list of more than 60 LMS vendors. For each of these vendors, we attempted to find their revenue and users online before calling them to verify. They were surprisingly accommodating and much of the data we collected is not published anywhere, which means that a significant portion of our research is original.

One flaw in the end user data is that every vendor seems to count their active number of users differently. We did our best to keep it consistent, but I know there is room for improvement.

The data points we collected to measure online presence include Compete traffic, Twitter followers, Facebook likes, LinkedIn followers and Klout score. Each one counted for 1/5of the online presence component.

Once we compiled all of the data, we ranked the vendors within each component. Our calculation of overall scores blended their raw totals with their ranking among the top 20 and weighted the two equally. The “top 5” charts were selected just from the vendors that made the top 20 rankings. The table below shows the hard data

One final note: some of the vendors provided “lowball” estimates of their users or customers so please take all of those data points with a grain of salt. I think it is safe to say that, especially by the time this blog post is published, every vendor will have more than the numbers listed. And given how dynamic the LMS market is, we intend to do this report again in another 12-18 months. If you have any suggestions, question any of the vendors listed, wonder how other vendors didn’t make the cut or even catch any errors, please let us know!

Bonus Research!

We considered including a sidebar of popular course authoring tools ordered strictly by online presence but decided it would dilute the focus. But that doesn’t mean we can’t share what they were in our blog post.

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About the Author

Michael Ortner

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Mike started Capterra in 1999 as the first website dedicated to helping people find the right software for their business. Today, Capterra lists over 20,000 software companies, displays more than 15,000 software reviews, and receives over 1,000,000 monthly visitors. He's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Fox News, and Inc. Magazine, among other publications, where he's spoken on topics ranging from the business software industry to running and growing a business in the 21st century. Mike received a business degree from Georgetown University and a philosophy degree from the University of London. He lives in McLean, VA with his wife and five children.

Comments

[…] as to why Capterra is releasing a Top 20 list of popular software, refer to our CEO, Mike’s, blog post on our LMS infographic for his reasoning behind these […]

Comment by Laura on January 29, 2013 at 10:56 am

This top 20 LMS list appears to be academically slanted – what are some key differences between the needs of academic organizations and corporations for LMS’s? I work in a corporate learning environment and some of the top LMSs I know of are not on this list (SABA, Plateau, etc). That makes me think this isn’t as valuable from a corporate standpoint as it may be from an academic standpoint.

Plateau Systems reportedly had 350+ customers (not sure how many users) when they were acquired by SuccessFactors in 2011. Then SAP acquired SuccessFactors in 2012. We have been unable to find out if SAP/SuccessFactors/Plateau still has 350+ LMS customers or if that has dropped off – which often happens following acquisitions like this.

Regarding Saba, they have over 700 clients and 10 million users according to their website. However, those numbers include talent management offerings other than their LMS. We have tried to get their LMS-specific numbers. When we do they will likely make this list.

Cengage and Pearson would also likely make this list but they too have been unresponsive.

That’s right, Don. Outstart was said to have 300+ customers when they were acquired by Kenexa last year. Learn.com was said to have over 500 customers when they were acquired in 2010. We’ll certainly make an effort to reach out to these companies again when we look to republish this research – both to get an estimate of their user numbers as well as their revised customer counts. What a competitive industry LMS is…

[…] to increase accessibility (the hallmark of the internet). Here is the link for more information; http://blog.capterra.com/top-lms-software-solutions-infographic/. As already mentioned, I have used Blackboard previously as a student in my own online educational […]

Michael,
I’ve seen your Authoring Tool list, but I’d like to see the results using the same methodology you used in the LMS research.

Comment by Karen on April 9, 2014 at 8:24 pm

Great piece. I think you’re absolutely right — you get the best results by broadening your search. With a competitive industry like online learning software, especially when it comes to proven companies like Atrixware, you have to take into account the range of unique offerings before deciding.

Comment by Rakesh Kumar on May 13, 2014 at 7:12 am

I have heard of Scholarlms.com, a great lms system based on moodle

Comment by Kate A on April 27, 2015 at 1:24 pm

Are these numbers international or US only? I assume international based on Moodle’s total customers, but I would like to confirm.